


A Failure to See

by Rarae



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Poetry, poem
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-26
Updated: 2016-08-26
Packaged: 2018-08-11 05:23:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7878193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rarae/pseuds/Rarae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A failure to see the meanings behind the words</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Failure to See

When I sat down in my English classes  
With a little frown and my scratched glasses,  
They used to place a tome before me  
And muse, “One day you will see."

The brittle book with grungy yellow stains,  
Scuff marks, and ugly lead hurricanes  
Used to give me a look, I felt, like a krill  
In a shark’s eye as it swarms for the kill.

The bumbling words across the pages  
That make of letters locked birds in cages:  
The cross of poets, I knew, was to bare  
The eternal fumbling of ink and prayer.

I see these “great poets’” scribbles and I think,  
“Why do they struggle and strife for the link  
To make in sync the fleas and the ‘thee’s,  
While yet all they tell is trouble in threes?”

They’re succinct storytellers and nothing more,  
Just bluffing to say they make words soar.  
Ozymandias warns against greatness  
Or so sworn the preachers brainless.

A summer’s day is just a thing to say,  
Roads to town a quest not, journeys maybe;  
Though a crown and a king may mean divine might,  
An eye without sight calls no higher flight.

How foolish these people are! to see meaning  
In written stars, to see all things gleaming.  
They talk of gods, of life, of seasons ‘marrow,  
Of men and women in daily sorrow.

But never consider the themes of life  
The cycles of death, the temporal strife,  
The vanity of the strong, loss and gain  
The tenacity of the weak, sun and rain.

God, I don’t even know where to begin  
They talk and squander time without end  
And yet speak and crow and rhyme of naught  
But their tale and none of what they ought.


End file.
